Monique started her blog at the end of 2011 to share her love of healthy, nutritious food and baking, and in less than three years was able to quit her full-time corporate job to work on Ambitious Kitchen full-time. Most of Monique’s food is geared towards those with active, healthy lifestyles, and she enjoys getting creative in the kitchen with unique ingredients – pairing different flavor combinations and playing with gluten-free and vegan recipes. She’s been featured in The Huffington post, Buzzfeed and Today.com just to name a few.

On Finding Time to Write About Her Food Adventures:

I think it has always been a goal of mine to start a blog. I just didn’t know where to begin, and so it took me about six months to get the guts and just say, “Okay, I need to start this.”

I worked a lot on my site on the weekends or after work. To be honest, it became this passion project, something that I just really, really enjoyed. So I’d come home and make a recipe, and then I’d photograph it really quick, and then I’d put it on my site. It was just learn as you go.

I was very familiar with the social media so that wasn’t a really big deal for me. But when I first started, I had no intention of blogging full-time. It was just really this thing that I really, really loved. I wanted to share my passion for food and nutrition with other people. It was about two years when I thought, “Okay, maybe I could do this full-time.” It involved me really working on it, every single night after work pretty much, and my weekends were devoted to photography and recipe testing. So it was basically working two full-time jobs for a long time.

The photography was a huge thing because I took one photography class in high school, and I was pretty good with it, but I had no idea what I was doing. I think it was about a year into my blog when I bought a Canon DSLR and started taking shots that were a little more professional. Before I was taking it with my point-and-shoot, and things were blurry. And I think no one really cared at that point. I got my professional camera, and things really changed, and I had to really pay attention. The whole editing process, it can take up to two or three hours. So that was really time consuming for me, and I had to learn how to, I guess, get that time down so that I was able to still blog and have my job.

On Turning Her Blog into Her Full-Time Career:

I really had to be strategic about what I was doing on social media. So that meant scheduling out my Facebook posts, scheduling out things on Pinterest and on Twitter. That was a really critical step, and then just making sure that I had a content calendar for myself. When I first started, I would just post whenever I felt like it, when I had time. Once I started committing to three posts a week or even more than that, I saw my traffic increase tremendously. It was crazy growth. I think that was a step in taking it full-time and also being organized and financially ready.

I thought about it every day for six months, and I remember I would complain about how much I didn’t like my job and how much I wanted to blog full-time. I think it just took a lot of courage to be able to do it. And so after six months of complaining, one day, I really didn’t have a plan. I was going to wait three more months, and then one day, I was just like, “Okay, if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do this.” So I went into my job, and I handed in my two weeks, and that was it, never looked back.

On Her Passion for Health and Fitness:

It was definitely something I picked up along the way. I really wasn’t conscious about the food that I was putting in my body until about my junior year of college. I was just at a point where I had gained weight. I was unhappy with the way I looked. I was not very confident. For me, it was this breaking point where I was like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t keep eating ranch or ketchup and french fries all the time.” So really for me, I had to teach myself about nutrition. I read every single women’s fitness and nutrition magazine out there. I purchased books. I just taught myself how to make healthy, wholesome meals. That was really my foundation. I don’t have a professional background in nutrition, but it’s very much become a passion of mine.

On a Misconception of Eating Healthy:

I think that people think that it’s really, really boring, and just because it’s ‘clean eating’ or ‘healthy eating’ that it’s just a chicken breast and asparagus and a sweet potato every single night. That was what I thought about it. It was just like, “It’s so boring. You can never have a burger,” but that’s not necessarily true. I think you can make really beautiful, healthy food, and it’s all about having nutritious ingredients.

When I first started, I was using a lot of sugar-free things because I thought that that meant that they were healthy, and I think a lot of people might think low-fat or sugar-free, but as I continued to learn about food and health, I learned that it’s good to have those healthy fats like avocados and nut butters and coconut oil and lean meats and vegetables. So that was a really big step in learning how to eat healthy for me.

You can be healthy and have nutritious food, but it doesn’t have to be boring. You just have to figure out a way to make the ingredients work for you.

On a Simple Way to Start Eating More Healthy:

I think the simplest way is probably meal prep, so making a list and going to the grocery store prepared so that you’re not buying a bunch of things that are unnecessary. What I like to do is plan out my meals before I go to the store. So I’ll say, “Where are all the ingredients I need? How can I make this meal a little more nutritious? Maybe adding in spinach to pasta,” or something like that. That has been a game changer for me.

On Her Summer Sweat Series:

I have a really good friend named Lee, and she also runs a blog called, Fit Foodie Finds. We’ve been friends for a few years. We both grew up in Minnesota, and one time we were on this vacation together, and we just thought, “Oh my gosh, what if we put together a fitness and nutrition program and just see what people thought about it?” We started the Summer Sweat series back in June. It was a six-week challenge, and people were just so in love with it. It came with meal plans. There were a bunch of different workouts. We worked with a personal trainer. So it was just something fun and different and a great way to bring traffic to both of our sites during what we call the summer slump where everyone’s outside and not on the Internet. So yeah, we’re doing it again this year, and we’re really, really excited.

I really, really love What’s Gaby Cooking, and she has just a really great approach to healthy and indulgent food, and beautiful photography. You can pretty much find any recipe you’re looking for. FoodieCrush is another great one. If you like baking, Sarah of Broma Bakery who I think has already been on your site, is a very good friend of mine, and for healthy recipes, Skinnytaste is another good one.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I really like following Andie Mitchell. She wrote a book, a memoir actually, and she’s just really inspiring and just a fantastic woman. It’s been so fun to follow her journey. She’s lost over 130 pounds and is just truly inspirational. So I follow her on Instagram, and then also I follow her blog.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I have an avocado slicer. It’s really helpful, so I don’t have to do it with my knife and chop off my hand when I’m try to get the pit out. It does it all for you.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Olives. My brother told me when I was a little girl that olives were, I think he said snails. I was five and I believed him for the longest time. Every time I looked at olives, it was just gross to me, but now I love them, especially black olives. I love putting them on my pizza and in my salads.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I have a lot of cookbooks. Skinnytaste, she has the website and she also came out with a really great cookbook. I love it because my boyfriend tends to not eat healthy but it has a lot of healthy meals, so we cook from it. Another great one is, Back In The Day Bakery cookbook. It’s just a fun baking one. There are a lot of cakes and cookies and pies, so I always use that for when I’m baking for my family and special occasions. I think those are my go-to’s.

Since starting her blog in 2010, Sarah has inhabited seven different kitchens, graduated college, worked in marketing for a restaurant group and now works full-time on Broma Bakery. Her blog, Broma Bakery, is where she shares her love of food while indulging in her passion for photography.

On Her Blog:

My dad’s a reporter, so I’ve always been around cameras and film and all of that stuff. So, from a very young age, I was always interested in photography, not necessarily food photography, but just holding cameras, taking pictures, things like that. Then, when I went to college, I really missed doing photography on a more regular basis.

At college, you get so stuck up with studying and not so fun stuff. So, I just decided to pick up my camera and started shooting food. The blog and the photography really came together in the same moment, in that, I missed my mom’s baking. I wanted to have some creative outlet and I just put them together.

I had no formal training. I had never done food photography before. I just picked up a camera and went with it.

On Her Interest in Baking:

I was always more interested in baking. My sister is a huge cook; she has been interested in cooking since she was 13 years old. She would help my parents cook almost every meal at my house, so she took on that role and I stepped back. But I’d always loved sweets; I’ve always had a huge sweet tooth. So, the baking came along more natural to me and it was a nicer reward for me in the end, to be able to eat desserts.

It’s a lot more precise and it takes, for me, my development is a lot of going to tried and true recipes I’ve used before, bloggers that I trust, and creating something new, but a lot of it is really taking stuff that you know is going to work and then working off of that, because there’s been times when I’ve tried doing things just thinking that I could make cookies or a cake and it’s really a science. You need be precise in what you do.

On Her Passion for Photography:

I was doing a lot of portraits. I did photography courses all throughout high school and then some in college as well, but I was really into taking pictures of people. I really liked engaging with different people. There was something about, when you put somebody in front of the lens and I guess have them shine through your pictures.

I, again, just really taught myself. I think that, if you look on my blog, my styling is very minimal, but there definitely is a style to it. I’ll use plain backdrops and things like that. And, in terms of that portion of the site, I thought it was really important to engage with my readers, just because there are so many people out there that are interested in food and food photography, but don’t really know where to start.

So many of my friends that have come over and see me taking my photos, the first time when they come over, they were like, this is what it looks like? I mean, the behind the scene is a lot more thrown together than you’d think. So, I thought it was really important to put that on the site, to make it seem a lot more accessible to people, and hopefully get them to be able to be inspired and start photographing food.

On Working on Her Blog Full-Time:

I guess it was fortuitous, really. I was working at this restaurant job and things weren’t working out. I wanted to make a switch and instead of jumping into something right away, I thought my favorite part of this job has been taking pictures of food.

I have this baking blog. It’s gotten good reception so far. Let’s give it a couple of months and see if I can really push this to be my full-time job. So, I just took a leap and went for it. Two months passed and I was like, I want to keep working on this. Then four months passed and it’s really just gone from there. It’s something I feel fortunate enough to be able to do as my full-time job and it’s definitely something that I want to have continue grow. But, yeah, it sort of happened and I went with it.

Doing it as a side project, I didn’t really set a schedule for myself. I didn’t set different tasks I had to do to keep up with things. Things that most people don’t realize is that, there’s recipe development and there’s photographing, posting, getting them out there, but then there is so much, in terms of social media and marketing and even just connecting with other bloggers, that goes into creating a successful blog, that takes so much time.

For me, I’ll wake up at 9:00 and I’ll just get a cup of coffee and go straight to my computer, and then I’ll comment on other blogs, see what’s been going on with blogger friends that I know and that usually takes about two hours to really go through and engage with other people. Then, I’ll switch to doing some Pinteresting. Pinteresting is really important, keeping yourself active on that. So, I’ll do that probably for another hour, take a break for lunch and then right after lunch, I’ll go into making a recipe and then photographing it as well. That can take anywhere from an hour and a half to the whole afternoon. Then sometimes, if I can get a workout in, I’ll do that.

On Some Misconceptions About Baking:

I think that there are two main things. In general, when people see baking and they see a brownie that’s perfectly fudgy or a cake that’s three layers, it seems like there is a lot that goes into it. And sometimes there is, but especially with my style of baking, it’s a lot easier than it seems. I mean, it is very precise, but as long as you’re following along with those directions and really making sure you have quality ingredients, those two things will take you far in baking.

Then, I’d say the other thing that really I’ve seen prevents people from doing things is things like Pinterest and all these blogs that have popped up, because you see this final products and they seem so unattainable, just because there’s so many of them and there’s perfect lighting and there’s these perfect bit shots and all of that. I think that really scares people and it makes them think that it’s something they can’t do.

My biggest piece of advice would be to just go out and try one of those recipes, and really see how it goes. More often than not, you’ll be surprised with what you can do.

On Messing Up in the Kitchen:

There have been so many times. It still happens all the time.

There was this one time when my sister and I were making a chocolate beet cake, like with beets. We followed the directions and we put the cake in the oven, and then we realized, “oh my God,” we didn’t put the oil in. So, instead of just a beet cake, we put it on the blog and called it a low fat beet cake. It totally worked, but things like that happen all the time.

There was one I did this winter. I was trying to do peppermint cookies, so I chopped up little circular peppermints and I baked them. They came out of the oven and they completely melted off of the cookies. There were these little candy drippings everywhere. And it was just absolutely awful. So yeah, it’s a regular occurrence in the kitchen.

On Some Online Resources for Those Interested in Learning More about Baking:

One site that I go to very regularly is Food52. It’s a fantastic site. It’s basically recipes that people submit, as well as recipes that the professionals at Food52 will recreate and photograph themselves, but then, in addition, they have this whole tips and tricks section, where you can learn things like if your baking soda is expired and how to make the perfect loaf and things like that. It’s been really helpful for me and it’s just beautiful photography. It’s a really nice site layout. So, I definitely would suggest that.

In terms of books, I really grew up with The Joy of Cooking and that’s the book that we constantly pulled out, anytime we wanted a recipe. So, just going to classics like that is really great, because you can’t go wrong.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook that make you happy?

On Pinterest, I follow Half Baked Harvest. She’s an incredible photographer and she has really unique things. On Facebook, I follow Ambitious Kitchen. She does great healthy recipes, but then she also does some really fun workout stuff. On Instagram, Kale and Caramel. It’s really innovative desserts. I love it.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I don’t think it’s unusual at all, but my KitchenAid is my baby. My boyfriend got it for my birthday a couple of years ago and I use it at least three or four times a week, and you can just do everything with it. So, it’s the most worth it gadget I’ve ever owned.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I used to not like avocados. I thought they were overrated. I just didn’t get them and then one day, I just made avocado toast, because I was bored, and I’m obsessed with avocados now. I put them on sandwiches, I put them in my toast, put them with my eggs. Sometimes I’ll have them for dinner, love them.

Kylie started her blog in 2008 when she was experimenting with vegetarian and veganism, and through her journey, discovered her love of baking.

Apart from showcasing her baked goods on The Baking Bird, she also shares her favorite places and adventures around where she currently lives, the lively food city of Portland, Oregon.

I am so happy to have Kylie Antolini of The Baking Bird joining me here on the show today.

On Finding Her Passion for Baking:

When I was at home and I was a teenager, my parents were meat eaters. I just became vegetarian because it interested me. I thought it was a healthier lifestyle and I had to fend for myself. So I first started out with getting cookbooks. Maybe you’re familiar with them: How It All Vegan! and The Garden of Vegan by Sarah Kramer and Tanya Barnard. They were my main inspiration.

I first started making some of their savory recipes. And then I decided to experiment with some of their dessert recipes. I just really love the idea that you can bake awesome stuff without using traditional ingredients like butter and eggs, and you get similar results.

I love the process of experimenting like with flax egg replacer or applesauce and bananas. So that was really the thing that caught on to me, and I really just enjoyed experimenting. I felt like a scientist in the kitchen. And to this day, I don’t bake vegan really anymore but one of my favorite vegan baking hacks is putting apple cider vinegar and non-dairy milk and making a buttermilk with it because it curdles the milk, which is awesome because I don’t like going to buy buttermilk because it usually goes to waste. I only use like a cup of it. That’s one of my favorite things that I’ve carried into my regular baking style now.

That was how I found my passion for baking. I just really enjoyed it and I combined my love for photography and started taking picture of things I made and thought, “Oh, I started a blog.”

On No Longer Being Vegetarian:

To be honest, it wasn’t really by choice. I had gotten into running quite a bit around the time that I became a vegetarian, and my body just couldn’t keep up with the nutrition I was getting.

Unfortunately, there were some signs that showed up here and there. My doctor encouraged me to start eating meat. I also suffered from a lot anxiety and insomnia and I noticed the correlation from eating to vegetarian and running too much. So it took a lot of convincing and my parents were really adamant about it. They’re just trying to get me meat all the time, and I was like, “Uh!” But I ended up feeling a lot better once I did and I started sleeping a lot better. My anxiety really went down. So that was really basically it. I wanted to keep being vegetarian but it just wasn’t best for my life.

On Her Interest in Food:

I know that after I was going to being vegetarian, I really got an interest in collecting a lot of cookbooks. I became really obsessed with food because when you have to start combining certain ingredients to have the right nutrition, the right balance, you really have to look at a lot of different resources. So I became obsessed about collecting lots of cookbooks and reading recipes. That was what really got me into cooking.

And my mom was always a really avid cook when I was younger. She kept all the vintage Bon Appétit magazines and was really into that. And my grandmother on my dad’s side is also a great baker. And so I would bake with her.

She’d always have a homemade pie or something for dessert when we come over to eat. I guess they were my inspiration and I grew up in a family that really loved food, so that had a big part of it.

On the First Thing She Baked:

Well, I remember the first thing that I bragged about. It was this vegan chocolate peanut butter pie with bananas, and no-bake. It was so easy and so delicious. I think it was actually from La Dolce Vegan, the cookbook from Sarah Kramer.

Fabulous recipe but terrible photos if you go back and look in the blog. It’s the very first one but it’s delicious.

On Things Not Going as Planned in the Kitchen:

I can think of one or two instances. But fortunately, it doesn’t happen very often which is great. That’s why I think baking is more of my thing than cooking.

I was trying to make a vegan chocolate cake. I turned the pan upside down and it just completely disintegrated and crumbled into pieces. I was like, “Okay.” I think I baked two things that day and they both didn’t turn out. I was like, “This is just not my day.”

Sometimes you have the baking energy and sometimes you don’t. There’s just something in the air and it makes your work shatter. But for the most part, I’m pretty lucky.

It always depends on your oven too. I had to get used to my oven in my apartment. It runs a little bit warmer. So I found over the years that it’s best to play it safe and subtract a little bit of time from your baking time and check it so it’s not too done.

On The Food Culture in Portland, Oregon:

Portland is crazy with food. There are so many people here that love food and have a passion for it. It was the number one reason I actually decided to move here. Because when I first visited, I spent a week here and had a list of places I wanted to go. I was just amazed with how people love food here and get such a wide variety.

You can go to a specific shop just for cupcakes or just for pie. I think the food culture is very experimental and it’s very inspiring. Sometimes it can get a little predictable.

There’s a lot of repeat comfort food here. A lot of pork belly, I see that left and right. So people really love that kind of Southern style. I see that quite a bit. But it makes sense when it’s overcast a lot of the time and it’s raining. So people really enjoy that kind of food here.

I will drive by and the line can be an hour long. It’s pretty nuts. But there have been a few places that have popped up that you can get donuts now. Pip’s Doughnuts is really amazing if you’ve ever had a chance to check them out. And my personal favorite is Coco Donuts.

On Special Places to Eat in Portland:

I would have to say as far as dinner places, my favorite, favorite place is Tasty ‘N Sons. They’re at North Williams and they’ve opened another location Downtown.

And I really have been loving Ox. I went there for my birthday. I had a fabulous birthday meal.

LucLac has an amazing happy hour. You can get like a huge variety of different small plates for just $15. They make amazing cocktails too. So they are really awesome. Sweedeedee is my favorite brunch place that can get really crazy busy though. A lot of people have caught on that it’s amazing.

For really good vegetarian/ vegan food, Harlow is wonderful too. They make great smoothies.

Levant is also really nice. They have Mediterranean food and they just started doing a brunch. And Scott Snyder who’s the owner, he’s actually from Santa Cruz where I’m from. So we have some ties to that in some ways. He’s really great. His food is awesome.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Well, I don’t have a television, so I think that makes me the odd one out. But I did just finished watching the last season of Top Chef.

Two of the chefs on the show were from Portland and that was all over the Portland news. I had to watch it.

I actually had an opportunity to photograph Doug Adams who was on the show, one of my freelance jobs for the Portland Mercury. So that was really awesome. I got to meet him in person and that’s made me more interested in watching the show.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

I definitely have a lot of favorite bloggers I follow on Pinterest and Instagram or what-not. My three favorites of late would be Half Baked Harvest. Perhaps you’re familiar with her. And my latest obsession, Twigg Studios. I think she’s from England or Australia. I forgot. Anyway, I contacted her because I just fell in love with her photography and wanted her to know that her stuff is amazing. So definitely check her out. Her photos for just her recipes are genius.

I also recently discovered Broma Bakery and I really like her recipes.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook that make you happy?

I wish I could say I had some really cool hand-me-down spoon from a great grandmother or something.

I would say my most treasured item, because I use it so frequently, two metal mixing bowls, my small and large. I bought them a few years ago when I started making macaroons. The recipe I was going off of said that it was best to have metal bowls just for keeping the coolness and protecting it from too much heat. And I love them.

I just use them for everything, so I couldn’t bake without them.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Cardamom did not sit well with me at all. But now, I love it. I want to put cardamom in every single thing I bake. A lot of recipes on the blog have cardamom in them. I almost have to stop myself because people are going to get tired of using cardamom now. It’s really weird. I don’t know what it was. I don’t know if it was becoming vegetarian and experimenting with spices, but I love cardamom and also ginger. I used to hate ginger and I use it all the time now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I think my number one favorite go-to resource book is The Flavor Bible. It’s pretty awesome.

If I want to tweak a recipe or I have an idea, I can go to that and it will list a bunch of ingredients that go really well with it. It’s pretty spot on.

I also really love the Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book because they have just the basic pie and cake recipes that you can make your own. They’ve been tested by the best of the best bakers and scientists. And that’s what they do all day long. So that’s a really great resource to have too.

Hello! I'm Gabriel Soh, home cook, food enthusiast and your host of The Dinner Special podcast.
Everything here on The Dinner Special is an experiment, just like with cooking. Thank you for listening and being part of the adventure.